What is quidditch?

Quidditch was created by author J.K. Rowling as the most popular sport for wizards and witches in the world of her Harry Potter novels; but it has been adapted for non-magical folks.

In the Harry Potter books, six players ride flying broomsticks, trying to score points against their opposing team by tossing a quaffle (a volleyball-sized sphere) through hoops guarded by a “keeper.” Meanwhile, they must avoid enchanted “bludgers” (think of them as dodgeballs with minds of their own), while a seventh player tries to catch an elusive “golden snitch”—a golden ball with hummingbird-like wings, which much be caught in order to end the game.

Real-world quidditch is much the same—though instead of flying, athletes run, mounted on broomsticks, and the golden snitch is instead a neutral athlete. It is an all-gender, full-contact sport that can be described as a cross between dodgeball and rugby, with the physicality of hockey and soccer thrown in for good measure.

Mastering “every facet of the game”

“I’m so unbelievably proud of my team,” says club president Samantha (Sam) Dinga ’18, a psychology and public health double major from Lagrange, Kentucky. “We outplayed everyone’s expectations in every facet of the game.”

One of the highlights for the Thestrals was that every person on the roster played in the tournament. There were even all-freshmen lines at times. And, the team lets no player’s talents go to waste.

“At the tournament, people commented that we were one of the only teams to utilize our female players as well as we do,” Dinga says. “We trained so hard learning how to tackle hard, make plays, and out-strategize our opponents.”

This victory is especially sweet for Dinga and fellow seniors Perry Wang, Steven Belitzky, Basem Ashkar, Tim Kwan, Joe Kelley, and Morris Shayo, after having failed to qualify for nationals two years ago.

“We came back from that setback,” Dinga says, “We trained harder than ever, and showed the country and the world what UR quidditch is capable of.”

“Our organization has spent the past few years working to build each of our teams up so that we as a whole can stand out and beat competition,” says organization president Deisy Abarca-Espiritu ’19. “The fact that we’re going to nationals for a second time is really a reflection of the work that everyone has put in to move us forward. We have a lot of depth and consistency, which will ensure that in coming years our younger members will have access to even better competitive opportunities.”

Rochester will face off against four other teams, taking on roles of both the defense and the prosecution of this year’s national championship case, United States v. Barrow, a trial about a bank teller charged with conspiracy to commit armed robbery by providing insider information to three people who attempted to rob a bank.

The case is fictitious, but teams use real case law, and their rules of evidence are modeled after the Federal Rules of Evidence.

During the national tournament, the Rochester team will spend two rounds prosecuting Barrow and two rounds defending her.

“We’ve spent all year working toward this,” says Hannah Brennan ’19, who plays a witness for the team. “Now it’s about really doing our best and having fun.”

The outcome of each trial in the tournament will be decided by a panel of legal professionals including lawyers, prosecutors, and judges. Each team’s defense and prosecution case is scored by the judges, with the highest scoring team advancing. In addition to Abarca-Espiritu, Rochester’s team includes Jonathan Dietz ’18, Matthew Hoffner ’19, Tinashe Marera ’20, Zachary Marshall-Carter ’18, Cindy Molina ’18, Emily Murphy ’19, and Samantha Myers 19.

As one of three seniors on the team, Marshall-Carter is excited for his final tournament.

“I’ve been doing this for years, so it’s great to see our organization getting to this level,” he says.

While many teams at nationals have faculty or alumni coaches, the University’s mock trial team is completely student-run.

“This is a very valuable opportunity for us,” Abarca-Espiritu says. “One where we can learn and gain experience.”

But such images only scratch the surface of what medieval studies entails. The Early Worlds Initiative—an interdisciplinary research project at the URochester—aims to help faculty, researchers, students, and even the general public delve deeper into this complex and intriguing field. Along the way, participants intend to answer one of the biggest questions among some of those outside the field: Why, in the 21st century, should we care about what happened so many centuries ago?

The scope of the Early Worlds Initiative actually stretches beyond medieval times in Europe. It encompasses social and cultural developments from the 5th to 18th centuries, which includes the early modern period as well. And as Hahn notes, it extends globally while recognizing the limitations and biases of research conducted in the United States or Europe.

“Issues like nationalism, representative government, certainly race—all these things existed in this previous age,” says Professor of English , a key contributor to the project. “Looking at those very different models of how they existed, not just in Europe but all over the world, helps us understand our own lives a bit more clearly.”

Crossing disciplines to build on Rochester’s ‘longstanding strength’

The initiative will bring together faculty members in several disciplines, who might otherwise work in isolation. In will include scholars in the humanities and social sciences with expertise in, among other areas, transnational networks and connections, textual science and analysis, and music, theater, and performativity. It will also include scholars in data science, optics, and imaging. Connecting faculty members from across disciplines and units (including the Memorial Art Gallery and Eastman School of Music) will help spur new and distinctive insights into this pivotal era in human history.

“It’s a really dynamic opportunity,” says Anna Siebach-Larsen, the director of the . “This is both where medieval studies is tending to go, and needs to go. There’s so much going on and one person can’t learn all of it. We really have to work together.”

The project originated last fall with Joan Rubin, the director of the University’s . “Rochester’s longstanding strength in the study of medieval and early modern cultures seemed to me to be the best foundation on which to build an innovative set of scholarly projects that would enhance the University’s reputation and create new knowledge in new forms,” she says.

Hahn concurs and credits the influx of faculty who have helped amplify Rochester’s research strengths in their respective fields. These include:

• , an associate professor of English and the director of the , which works to recover and preserve cultural heritage objects.
• , a professor of history whose research focuses on the intersections between magic, science, and religion in medieval and Renaissance Europe.
• , an associate professor of musicology at the Eastman School of Music, who studies European sacred music from the 14th through 16th centuries.

Siebach-Larsen, who earned her PhD in medieval studies from the University of Notre Dame, is also a relatively new arrival, having joined the University in August 2017. She seeks to make the Robbins library a collaborative space where research can flourish. How? By building research and rare materials collections, fostering community, developing events and programs, and curating exhibitions that are not only cross-disciplinary, but also cross-geographical—in keeping with the initiative’s focus on a global perspective.

“This will help people to recognize that this era of human history is not just isolated to one particular geographical area,” she says.

Professor of History shares Siebach-Larsen’s excitement about the project’s potential to cultivate scholarship that extends beyond medieval times in Western Europe. Devaney is primarily a historian of Spain, but his expertise spans the Mediterranean world. He believes the Early Worlds Initiative will “create a lot of energy and enthusiasm,” bringing further recognition to the University’s scholarship and resources in medieval and early modern studies.

The future of the Early Worlds Initiative

Like Devaney and Siebach-Larsen, Hahn is optimistic about the project’s relevance and reach. He’s currently organizing a conference about race in the Middle Ages, tentatively set for spring 2019 at the University. “I think all of us in early fields hope to share our expertise, so that people in the 21st century will pay attention to, and learn more about, what happened six or eight hundred years ago,” says Hahn.

“I know it sounds cliché,” says Seibach-Larsen, “but a project like this really does open our eyes to entirely different worlds.” She promises that the Early Worlds Initiative is not just for academics and scholars. Students and the general public can also find value in the project’s output, collaborations, and resources while contributing their own perspectives and insights. And yes, look for knights, castles, dragons, and other symbols of medieval times, too.

“There’s this whole world out there that we’re just starting to uncover. And there’s a place for everyone in it.”

Ball is an organizer and speaker for a series of events titled “Planting a Seed: Migrant Workers in the American Landscape.” The program will examine the long, complex, and storied history of migration from the Mexican border to the United States.

“We need to pay closer attention to this group that is often marginalized in our research, our teaching, and our everyday interactions,” says Ball.

The with Ball’s talk on March 25 at 5 pm in Morey Hall room 221. Titled “Migrants in the Movies,” Ball examines the relationship between the US and Mexico in the 20th century, looking at the representation of migrants and immigrants in film and the blurring lines between these two groups.

Next up on March 26 at 6:30 pm in Schlegel Hall at the Rotunda is a roundtable discussion, “Migrants for Change,” about the impact of collaborations between migrant workers and community organizations. Participants include:

• Ramón Torres, president of Familias Unidas por la Justicia (FUJ), a union of independent agricultural workers from Washington state and the only labor union led by over 400 indigenous Mixteco and Triqui farm workers.
• Edgar Franks, a representative of Washington state-based , an organization that has aided in FUJ’s quest to be recognized as an official union.
• Carly Fox, a worker rights advocate with the of New York. Fox comes as a representative of Alianza Agricola, a western New York farmworker-led, grassroots organization advocating for restored access to driver’s licenses. She will be joined by another Alianza member.
• , the Ruth Miller Brody and Bernard Brody Endowed Professor at the University’s School of Nursing, who researches ways to minimize health disparities in the immigrant population. Stein has also been invited to serve on the board of the .

The program concludes on April 4 at 5 pm in Morey Hall 221 with a student-led discussion, “Students for Change.”

Ball says she is “looking forward to students, faculty, and the university community’s building new relationships and getting involved.”

And before that, he was a would-be Broadway star.

“I was deeply involved in the theater,” he says of his undergraduate days. “I lived in the Drama House.” Kravetz seriously considered making a career of acting, until one day he had to decide: “I was cast in a play, and someone called me up saying they had a job opening in a television station news department.”

Kravetz says his time at Rochester, where he majored in sociology, prepared him well for what became a successful broadcast career that now spans more than 30 years.

“I think my studies at Rochester in theater and sociology and in the humanities—I took a lot of English, history, and philosophy—really were the best kind of preparation for work in communication and journalism,” he says.

A native of Boston, Kravetz returned to Rochester this fall to speak with students studying the humanities and to give a lecture on the state of the media in today’s political climate. His visit was part of a new collaboration between the and the Gwen M. Greene Center for Career Education and Connections. The two departments are working together to create new opportunities for students in the humanities to network and to recognize the ways in which their skills are highly coveted by many employers.

“It’s been really exciting,” says Caterina Caiazza, director of career curriculum initiatives. “You really find that a lot of what these students learn through their humanities studies are the same that employers are looking for.”

Caiazza says that the Career Center is working to help students identify those skills and articulate their value to employers. She calls visits like Kravetz’s “paramount.”

“We are career educators and not necessarily specialists within each industry that’s out there,” she says. “We find it much more valuable for students’ understanding and development to connect them with the people who are out in the world doing the things that they may have interest in. Then students can relate what they learn to what they’re doing in the classroom and beyond.”

Studying the humanities offers valuable preparation for a wide range of fields, says Kravetz. He calls it an advantage to come to virtually any job as a “broadly educated person who reads interesting literature, who understands political science, who appreciates philosophy, and who ponders how to make sense of the country we live in, and the world we live in.”

He urged the students he met with to hone their communication skills: “Write, write, write. Learn how to write, learn how to communicate. And the better you write, the better you’re going to be.”

Caiazza shares Kravetz’s belief in taking advantage of opportunity. She calls the Humanities Center’s collaboration with the Career Center a source of great potential.

“I think the possibilities may be endless,” she says.